


Darkling Wander

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Alternate Universe - Regency-Inspired Science Fiction, Balloons, Blow Jobs, Declarations Of Love, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mesmerism & Animal Magnetism, Semi-Public Sex, Sneaking away from a fancy ball to have mostly-clothed sex on the premises, The Moon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25846015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Captain Dameron's return from his sojourn on the moon arouses a fair bit of excitement, not least in Lando's heart.
Relationships: Lando Calrissian/Poe Dameron
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12
Collections: The Prince Regent's Birthday Regency/Victorian Flash Exchange





	Darkling Wander

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> Title from [Darkness](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43825/darkness-56d222aeeee1b) (1816) by Byron; lunar images and concepts deeply influenced by [Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_](https://www.bartleby.com/380/prose/828.html).

Captain Dameron's sojourn on the moon aroused a fair bit of excitement. His trip was not the first, so his reception never could have matched the ecstasies that had greeted earlier aeronauts. Still, such journeys were hardly common events.

In the vale of folly gathered all that had been lost, missed, neglected, and broken on earth. He sought the shards of the Lady Organa's broken heart and the spilled reason and wits of her mad son. Wrapped in furs like a Laplander, topped by a round hat of rumpled gray lambskin, he breathed shallowly through the trumpet of a lily as he assembled pieces of what the dead had lost.

Nothing changed up here. More accumulated, but nothing changed. The moon was a globe of grief, where he was most at home. (Inside a tomb, change persisted, rot took hold, decay accelerated. It was outside, among those left behind, that time ceased and caught fast.)

The moon was not silent; its noise was the trembling song-sighs of glass harmonicas and the raspy creaks of ghostly crickets, revenant locusts. Everything in sight was bloodless and still, further coated over with a frost as silky-clinging as talc. No light but what could be reflected, and no warmth, either. An enormous dispelled breath, sorrow that clumped in rocks and dusted the world. The river of death pumped sluggishly, dull mercury that slid from pole to pole and back again.

He was loath to depart. He did so only to honor the promise and premise of his voyage: to return the collection he had made. 

From the lunar surface, Dameron sent down word of his imminent departure. Eyes closed, breath held tight inside his ribs, he'd grasped an iron rod in each hand and flung his intent outward into the universal medium. Transmitted thus, propagated over a half hour's descent, the message was received by the two great magnets of England (and at least three dreamers). One magnet perched in the steeple of St. Magnus-the-Martyr while the other listened from St. Paul's dome. They confirmed its veracity between them, and preparations to welcome Dameron back to the earth commenced.

☽◎☾

His ship, the _Leia_ , was shaped like a teardrop that slid from earth to the wider world. The basket dangling from it was little more than a coffin, room enough for a man to stand but no more. For the lunar journey, the basket had been lined with fur and wrapped in wool. Sighting via a polemoscope that jutted from the basket, he piloted by tugging a variety of pulls above his head, such that the vessel's motion might be considered analogous to the song of carillon.

Dameron brought her down on Lord Calrissian's Hampshire estate just before sunrise. Despite the early hour, a considerable crowd had gathered. The predawn light trembled, hesitant and tinged with lavender. Frost coated the lawn and the crowd's breath hung shimmering about their heads. 

The crowd pressed forward, little restrained by the few burly men arrayed between it and the landing stage. To its great disappointment, the pilot's capsule opened at the back, such that Dameron's exit was witnessed solely by one groom and a sleepy flock of starlings. The figure, of ordinary height though quite broad, shambled off to one of the waiting coaches. He did not pause to acknowledge the crowd, let alone address it.

A small girl, cheeks ruddy from the cold, set up a howl that, most of the crowd would have agreed, expressed their disappointment well, if a touch dramatically.

Dameron's arrival in London was preceded by a spate of broadsides, each claiming exclusive knowledge of his journey, its purpose, and dangers met during travel. His coach made good time and he arrived in Westminster by late afternoon. He spent the journey swaddled in several blankets, his teeth chattering fast and skin burning as his blood gradually warmed and ventured back to his extremities. At his side, a small valise stayed tucked under his arm.

He had the carriage stop near Somerset House, across the Strand and up Wych-street. The new bridge was nearly complete, but traffic still snarled at its foot. He paid a boy to go and fetch Finn from the latter's preferred coffeehouse. Finn's closet in the Antiquarian Society was much more a courtesy than a useful physical space. He preferred to work elsewhere. While Dameron waited, he struggled to stay awake, but the sight of Finn hurrying down the street did the trick.

"I take it you got my message," Dameron said and passed his valise to Finn, who nodded.

"I did." Smiling, Finn tilted his head slightly. "Care to linger?"

"Half-dead," Dameron said. 

"Ah, well. Success?" 

"Made it back."

"No, the collection." Finn indicated the valise in his arms. The glass jars within tinkled. "Success?"

"You will have to tell me," Dameron replied. "I'm merely the errands-man, aren't I?"

Finn frowned at that, his handsome face wrinkling elaborately, but before he could speak, Dameron reached to close the carriage door. He knew how keen Finn must be to begin study of the contents of the valise. 

"Come by tomorrow?" 

His frown fading, but not vanishing, Finn nodded. 

Dameron could not, of course, return to his apartments in Organa House. That site was barred to all but Rey and Finn; it was aggrieved by such an eldritch storm as to beggar belief. A ruption of contingencies, each desperate to impose itself, held the house in lamprey fangs. The carriage therefore conveyed him past Swallow-street to Lord Calrissian's London residence. As warmly as he was invariably welcomed there, Dameron's discomfort persisted. It swelled to unbearable proportions today, thanks to his exhaustion. He forced himself to speak naturally to the servants asking after his travel and held himself as straight as he could, despite the cold still wracking him, despite his need to tip forward, fold on himself, and sleep.

A long soak in the bath helped him warm slightly more. He dozed a little, as he had in the coach, but his exhaustion had passed the point of easy resolution. Darkly shimmering lunar particles, finer than frost but far hardier, coated the surface of the water when he was finished. They'd lain in his pores and settled in the bulbs of his lungs; it would be some time before he shed them all. 

Clean and flushed outwardly, though still chilled within, Dameron found it impossible to rest after the bath. He was deep in the fidgets and beset by an uneasiness. Each noise from the lower floors seemed to promise Lando's entrance, but it never came.

In fact, Lando had sent a note with his regrets, but Poe only received this when he came down for dinner.

He ate lightly, his gut protesting anything more than good warm bread and beef gravy, accompanied by several generous bowls of saloop.

Lando's note reminded him that he was expected that evening at Sir Francis Burdett's for terrestrial homecoming celebrations. Accordingly, he returned upstairs to dress for the evening and took his coffee there. His fingers remained thick and clumsy, half-frozen. He contented himself with a simple gastronome's knot; notwithstanding its ease, he required four cloths before he looked presentable.

☽◎☾

At the party, Dameron moved and smiled, spoke and gestured, despite himself. He may as well have been one of Finn or Rey's magnetized somnambulists, bade to walk and act with neither thought nor will. The rooms were very crowded, hot against his half-frozen skin, and _loud_.

He saw Rey, lovely in cream and celandine, her hair curling against her cheek, speaking to a Councillor of the Royal Society, an old and fussy man who still powdered his hair and wore frills down his round stomach. He thought he saw Finn in another room, but could not reach him; when he did find his way to the spot, there were only a pair of admirals and their shy wives.

In the midst of the racket, he asked a servant for coffee. Breath was coming difficult and something pounded at the back of his skull.

"My dear," Lando said, and Dameron opened his eyes. Lando took his elbow as Dameron tried not to stagger. "Let's find you some air, shall we?"

He steered Dameron to the back room, and thence to the broad, shadowed veranda that gave out on the rear courtyard.

"We'll be missed," Dameron said, glancing over his shoulder.

Standing against the balustrade, Lando laughed and gestured him over. "In that press?"

"I rather think so, yes." He joined Lando and tried to will away the ache in his skull, the stone in his chest.

"Humor an old man," Lando said, at which Dameron chuckled softly and nudged a bit closer.

"Hardly. You're not _old_."

"Older than you," Lando interrupted and brushed the back of his hand down Dameron's cheek. "Always will be."

"By that measure..." Dameron began, but trailed off, lips parting as Lando continued to stroke his cheek. Their eyes met and they regarded each other for several long moments. Though they were a garrulous pair, given to much quizzery and persiflage, they did not need to speak just now.

☽◎☾

Lando first knew Poe Dameron as a set of initials on a confidential financial report. Dameron was an early member of the committee to rescue Toussaint from the Château de Joux. The committee's ranks were secret, known only to each other and the twins. Only afterward did Lando learn his name, then meet him in the flesh.

That was nearly fifteen years ago now. Poe was radiant and unbearably young, impossible to resist, even had Lando been willing to try. Unfailingly amiable, courteous with the sort of warmth that could not be insincere, Dameron was also as flexile and difficult to catch as the gases that lifted his balloon to such remarkable successes. 

Lando had already enjoyed a vagarious and chequered career over decades. A sailor in his youth, then a genteel man of property and gaming enterprise, he was, at the time of the Toussaint _affaire_ , a wealthy peer, by advantageous marriage, who enjoyed the company of numerous friends. Many of those friends were shocked to learn of his participation in the prison-break; no doubt they blamed Leia's legendary wiles for his temporary loss of reason.

Along with her brother, Leia was responsible for many things, including the planning and administration of several radical projects, of which the Toussiant campaign was just one. Through her, he met Poe and other young people, all of them too young to remember Pitt's extended war against radicalism a generation earlier, too arrogant to learn much from tales of that war, and entirely too charming.

Enflamed with scandal and reckless with notoriety, Lando resumed some of his older habits, including adventures with Solo and tomcatting the likes of Poe.

Time was slippery thing: Lando no longer felt quite so old as he had then. The years since had been delightful.

It was a different story with Poe.

The man beside him tonight was as handsome as he'd ever been, and just as warm. But he was also quieter, aged in a manner that Lando himself could not entirely twig. Travails and grief were impossible to avoid — Lando knew that better than most — but the lines on Poe's face, between his brows and around his eyes, were etched both loss as well as joy, experience and disappointment. He was a more serious, but no less attaching, man than had ever seemed possible all those years ago.

"You left without a word," Lando said.

"The conditions for departure were...precarious. Unsettled."

"Of course."

"And the young ones can be —" Poe lifted his hands and let them fall. He served Rey and Finn, and always would.

"Persuasive," Lando finished for him. He was not about to argue over this. He was far from interested in that; he had already spent his anger. "They are quite persuasive. All the same, I was beside myself."

Poe looked at him sharply. "Beside yourself?"

"You sound doubtful."

His frown darkened, then dissipated. "You surprise me."

Lando considered what to respond. He might have chosen widely: laughed it off, teased Poe further, argued the point. He did not want to do any of that.

"I wish I did not," he said at last. Poe's expression seemed to flicker. "I wish I had your trust."

"Sir —" Poe stopped speaking, but moved from foot to foot, restless. After a moment, hoarsely, he said, " _Lando_."

"I wonder what I can do to prove myself worthy," Lando continued. 

"It's I who is unworthy," Poe said and pushed a restless hand through his hair. "Among other defects."

"You are not."

"Oh, I _am_. Very much so."

Lando touched Poe's face again, urging him to move yet closer. "No."

For a man endeavoring to plight his troth, Lando reflected, he certainly was saying _no_ frequently.

Poe closed his eyes; his lashes lay inky against his wind-chapped face. "I miss her. I grieve —"

"Yes." Lando swallowed and, cupping Poe's cheek, drew him close.

Poe shook his head, as if it that would shed his cares. "We all do, I know, I'm no —"

"Your heart is your own," Lando said. Poe needed reminding. He was endlessly solicitous of others, yet painfully neglectful of himself. "You need not reduce it by comparison to others' pains."

"I miss her," Poe said again.

"You are not alone."

"I feel as though I am."

"Yet you are not. You have friends. You have, I daresay, love, should you seek that."

Poe opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of speaking, and pressed his face into Lando's palm. Lando's thumb swept over the divot of Poe's chin, up to the pillowy swell of his lower lip.

"Thank you," Poe said finally.

"My dear —" Lando stopped there. When he looked at his fingertips, they were dusted with a fine, glimmering powder, the texture of coal-dust but the hue of mercury, or dark waters passing beneath torches. He showed them to Poe.

Poe bit his lip, his gaze darting away. After a moment, he said, "Moon marks its visitors."

He'd known, hadn't he, of the dangers of that journey. He'd known all too well, yet he'd decided not to enlighten Lando. Fond irritation warred with an older, deeper pang of pricked pride before Lando mastered himself. He shook his hand, watching the silvery dust disperse into the dark.

"Should I take thought?"

"Don't trouble yourself," Poe replied. He trembled, his breath appearing in a pale mist, despite the pleasant evening.

"I shall," Lando said, "and I do."

He slipped his arm around Poe's waist and drew him yet closer, until they were pressed up against one another, the balustrade behind Poe and Lando between him and the party.

"Please don't —" Poe started but broke off when Lando kissed him. 

His free hand moved into Poe's silky hair, fingers curling, to tilt his head this way, then that, and to hold him close. Keep him here, absorbed and starting to pant, in Lando's embrace.

Poe's mouth was cold and slick, alien, like the sea rocks in December. But he held Lando tight, kissing back fervently, and even canted his hips just so, spreading his legs to allow Lando's knee to slot between them. Soon enough, Poe found the front flap of Lando's pantaloons and his thumb toyed with the lowest button. Lando was growing beneath the layer of silk, slow and deliberate as everything he did these days. He'd been fast, once, as fast as Solo or Dameron, a laughing streak, impossible to catch.

Lando was something else nowadays, and another change revealed itself tonight, under Poe's hand and in the chilly ardor of his kiss. Poe was gradually warming, inch by arduous inch, and the spread of heat was matched in slow, deliberate pace by Lando's comprehension. He ground against Poe's palm, bade him with mutters and nipping bites to tug open the flap, shoved himself hard when he was freed, and all th while, what he had not known was splintered away, replaced by threads, then veins, then sheer _rivers_ of certainty.

Poe's talents for pleasure — for finding what someone wanted and presenting it to them, artlessly, as tokens of friendship — were matched only by his skills in the air. There, he was alone, freezing and stricken, but here? Here he was happily caught, eagerly servicing, _lovingly_ attending. He lowered himself carefully, with creaking spine and wet-filled mouth, to his knees, let Lando pin him there, and warmed his mouth on Lando's prick. His eyes rose to Lando's; they stared, mutually stricken, and formed a union there, throat and lips married to swollen cock. 

The sounds of the party behind them filtered out in erratic streams. The fountain in the garden below tinkled. And above, the lonely moon watched silently and without reaction, at their sudden, spasming declarations, body spurting, words spraying, kiss renewing, full of sticky goo and sweet, silly, perfectly heartfelt vows. 

_e n d_


End file.
